Soulstorm ARG
An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and uses transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. Lorne Lanning was a guest on the Kinda Funny Games podcast on March 17, 2016, shortly after the announcement of Oddworld: Soulstorm. Among discussing some minor details about ''Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus'' and Soulstorm, Lorne also mentioned Oddworld Inhabitants' plans to communicate and tease new information about the game in a style similar to an alternate reality game.Kinda Funny's GDC Live Show: Day 3 This would hopefully prevent long gaps of silence from the developer between updates and keep the fan community more engaged while waiting. Getting started The first clues of the ARG were found in an image Oddworld Inhabitants tweeted before Soulstorm's announcement.Oddworld Inc. on Twitter A number of white dots found on a fuzzy backdrop of the original SoulStorm Brewery turned out to be the word 'Monday' in braile when turned sideways. Soulstorm would be revealed that following Monday. The source code of the announcement page provided the next clues and was found by Xavier on the Oddworld ForumsOddworld Forums thread "SoulStorm ARG", post #1. In it he found a number of cryptic HTML comments, including: By checking the URLs of several images on the page, Xavier found links to the three following images: *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/images/reveal4.jpg *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/images/reveal3.jpg *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/images/reveal2.jpg When extrapolating the first hidden file was found: *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/images/reveal1.jpg A mysterious image containing a cryptic sentence reading in part "CAN YOU S- HARD TO K- IF BREAKING- THROUGH HA- ON NEED A D-". So far the meaning of this image is unknown. The page was later updated several times to include more HTML comments, often corresponding to the addition of other cluesOddworld Forums thread “SoulStorm ARG”, post #47Oddworld Forums thread “SoulStorm ARG”, post #79Oddworld Forums thread “SoulStorm ARG”, post #83: The video file serving as the distorted background of the page ended up holding its own clue: *http://www.oddworld.com/soulstorm/twitching.mp4 Manco discovered that one of the very last frames of the file produced an image that read "19<-- eblmxg yhk fx"Oddworld Forums thread “SoulStorm ARG”, post #47. It was then quickly discovered that this was a Caesar cipher. When all the letters are 'shifted' backwards 19 places in the alphabet, the phrase "listen for me" is the result. Communication channel opens At some point on 24th March 2016, the Soulstorm website was updated with a new message box, where users were able to enter text and receive various responses from an unknown entity. Members of the Oddworld Forums quickly discovered that entering some Oddworld-themed words and phrases would prompt more unique responses.Oddworld Forums thread "SoulStorm ARG", post #85 These responses were sometimes in plain text, but were also often written backwards, encoded with a Caesar cipher and 'shifted' 13 times down the alphabet, or a combination of the above. Later, some of the responses also had a chance of having their letter order shuffled, in addition to being encrypted with the cipher. Identified unique responses: -: Signifies no change to the response. ... : Signifies that the response was changed to generic responses. Occasionally, the message box would respond to inputs (correct or incorrect) with one of several responses, which had a chance of being ciphered and/or shuffled similar to the unique responses. These were not unique responses as any input could potentially trigger them. Following the trail This section is a work in progress capturing the work done on the Oddworld Forums. When entering 75 queries in the SoulStorm website the page will return a cryptic image instead of text: *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/attemptnumberseventyfive.jpg Note that this is probably what the following comment in html code of the SoulStorm page was hinting at: The attemptnumberseventyfive.jpg image reveals by magic eye stereogram a link to the following text file: *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/intercepted.txt The intercepted.txt text file contains the following hidden messages: *findme *hear me *rescue me *0451.jpg *spirit of #RF dot jpg Those messages direct us to the following files: *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/0451.jpg *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/spiritof1029.jpg The 0451.jpg picture was previously hinted at by the following comment in html code of the SoulStorm page, the numbers in the comment being the same: The spiritof1029.jpg picture has the text "lsot.mp3" hidden in it, which leads to: *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/lsot.mp3 Multiple clues were pointing to "ED" being the next step: *The letters ED are being randomly put to bold in the first paragraph of the SoulStorm page *The letters ED are the only letters in italic in the 0451.jpg in the message M''E'' FIN''D'' *Morse code in the lsot.mp3 at 01:11 on both channels -> . -.. (translated: ED) *Additional Morse code at 1:40. The code . -.. (ED) can be heard when the blips are pitched up a couple octaves. *The communication box sending back the message "FIND ME, HEAR ME, SAVE ME" when ED is inputted This led us to the following address: *http://www.oddworld.com/soulstorm/ed/ It contains nothing but the following text: iÌ ÌžÌ¹Ìº cÌ´Í™Ì™Ì°Ì¬Í™aÍÌnÌ˜ÍšÌœÍ–Ì»Í” ÌºÌ®hÒ‰Ì¦Ì–ÌœÍ™eÌ¶Í“aÌŸÌœÌ–Ì•rÌ¶Í“ Ì©Ì¹Í…yÍœoÌ¹Ì°ÌŸÍ”uÌ¢Í‰Ì¼,Ì¦Í•Í‰Í‰ÍŽÌ• ÌžÌžjÌ—Ì¼Ì®Ì Ì¥Ì¥ÍusÌ—tÌ©Ìº.Ì»Ì— Í•ÌžÌ³Ì¹ÌÌ€Í…iÌ›tÌ°Ì¯Ì™Ì£Í–ÌŸÌ™'ÌªÌªÌžÌ¦Ì³Ì©sÌ• Ì©Ì¬Ì—Í–Ì»Ì–Ì€fÌ´Ì™Í‰ÍŽÌ¯ÌºaÌ«iá¹‡ÍšÌžÍ¢tÌµÍšÌ¬Í‡Ì°ÍÌ¼Í…,Ì¬Í•Ì¹Ì–Ì©Ì®ÍœÍ… ÌºÍ”ÍŽÍ‰ÌºÌ±bÌ¸ÌÌ°Ì¬uÌ»ÍÌ²Ì•tÌªÌ¼Ì®Ì£Ì« Ì®Í•ÍŽÍÍ¡iÌ®Ì±Í™ ÍŽÌ²Ì¤Ì¯cÌ·ÌºÍ“aÌœÌªÌºá¹‰Ì»Ì²Ì¦Ì²Ì¼Ì»Í˜ Ì§Ì³Ì—Ì®Ì˜Ì¦Í”hÍÌªÍŽÌ¬Í”ÍŽÍÌ—È©Ì¤ÌžÍ–Ì¬Ì˜Í•Ã ÌºÌÌÌ¼Å—ÍˆÌ³Ì Ì¤Ì³Ì— ÍyÌ²ÍˆÌÌ˜Ì°Í”ÍžoÌ¢Ì—Ì³Ì˜uÍ”Ì«ÍšÍ‰.Ì©Ì¼Ì Which translates, once looked at with UTF-8 browser text encoding: ☀i̠̞̹̺ c̴͙̙̰̬͙a͍̭n̘͚̜͖̻͔ ̺̮h҉̦̖̜͙e̶͓a̟̜̖̕r̶͓ ̩̹ͅy͜o̹̰̟͔u̢͉̼,̦͕͉͉͎̕ ̞̞j̗̼̮̠̥̥͍us̗t̩̺.̻̗ ͕̞̳̹̭̀ͅi̛t̰̯̙̣͖̟̙'̪̪̞̦̳̩s̕ ̩̬̗͖̻̖̀f̴̙͉͎̯̺a̫iṇ͚̞͢t̵͚̬͇̰͍̼ͅ,̬͕̹̖̩̮͜ͅ ̺͔͎͉̺̱b̸̝̰̬u̻͍̲̕t̪̼̮̣̫ ̮͕͎͍͡i̮̱͙ ͎̲̤̯c̷̺͓a̜̪̺ṉ̻̲̦̲̼̻͘ ̧̳̗̮̘̦͔h͏̪͎̬͔͎͍̗ȩ̤̞͖̬̘͕à̺̭̭̼ŗ͈̳̠̤̳̗ ͏y̲͈̭̘̰͔͞o̢̗̳̘u͔̫͚͉.̩̼̠ When cleaned up into plaintext, this reads: i can hear you, just. it's faint, but i can hear you. Current Investigation The community is looking where the following files lead: *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/0451.jpg *http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/lsot.mp3 The audio file has hidden morse codes scattered through it in different time marks, as follows: * 00:15, left audio channel -> . - (translated: ET) * 00:15, right audio channel -> . --. (translated: EG) * 01:11, both channels -> . -.. (translated: ED) * 01:48, both channels -> - . (translated: TE) The four codes translated, in order and together, spell: "ETEGEDTE", if we consider the left audio channel comes first, and "EGETEDTE", if we consider the right audio channel comes first. References __FORCETOC__ Category:The Real World